So What’s Next?

This text introduces the most basic tools and techniques available when writing with Ink and Inky. You have barely scratched the surface. Which is great. The hope is that you have seen enough to pique your interest, to set your wheels turning, to encourage thinking of the ways you can use these tools to create something.

So go create things.

Play around on this surface for as long as you like. Scratch it. The more you work with Inky, the more you will learn what it can do. As you develop your own tricks with Inky, you will start to wonder about other possibilities. By investigating those possibilities, you will learn about more tools and techniques that are available to you.

The sample stories provided with this text are rudimentary. They barely qualify as “stories.” However, they were created with the purpose of demonstrating—with simple, clear examples—Inky’s most basic functions. When you feel like you’re ready, check out Inkle Studios’ own sample story, The Intercept. You can then find the full, 1686 line Inky script either here, or in Inky itself through the drop-down menu Ink>Full Stories>The Intercept. The Intercept is an example of what can be done over time and with practice. The script is composed of a complex web of variables and conditionals, but it is created almost entirely with techniques described in this text.

Using the drop-down menu File>Export commands, you can publish your Ink stories directly to html or java script. From there, it’s easy to publish to venues such as itch.io. The community there is a fantastic resource for those seeking to explore ways to publish their playable stories.

Remember too that for those seeking to create multi-media stories like video games, Ink integrates natively with the game engine, Unity. You can find the free plug-in here. There a wide variety of resources across YouTube and the web that explain Ink-Unity integration.

Go create things.